A water company that charged a primary school £26,000 after a leak has performed a u-turn and said it actually only owes £850.

Water Orton Primary School head teacher Carl Lewis admitted he may have had to make two teaching assistants redundant should he be forced to pay t he huge sum quoted to him after the underground leak before Christmas last year.

But Water Plus, retailer for Severn Trent which supplies the water to the school site, has now confirmed the figures were out - by thousands of pounds.

Relieved Mr Lewis said: “There are many demands on school’s finances in the current climate and it is a great relief to myself, staff, governors and parents at school that we will not have to make any staffing cuts and we can now get back to focussing on the children’s learning.

Water Orton Primary School

“Since the incident I have had offers of support from Warwickshire County Council and parents have even offered to crowd fund to try and raise money for the school.

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“Water Plus and Severn Trent have worked very closely with the school over the past two weeks to look into the problem. To be fair they have been very good and a representative from customer services telephoned me regularly with updates and reassurances that a solution would be found. I am very grateful to them for doing this and it is good to know such big companies have a human and compassionate side.

“After a traumatic two weeks we can now look forward to our new school building which opens in September and will hopefully take away many of the problems we experience in our current school which is 140 years old.”

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A spokesperson for Water Plus confirmed: “After lengthy investigations we now believe that although there was a leak at Water Orton Primary School, the meter reads that were provided to us, that led to the unusually high bill, were incorrect. We’re sorry for what’s happened and have talked to the school about our findings.

“We have recalculated their bill which is more in-line with what we would expect. We will continue to work with the school and watch for any further spikes.

“We are really pleased that we’ve now been able to resolve this matter with the school.”